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Waiverpalooza rolls on: State of Nevada granted partial #HCR waiver

Nevada got a partial waiver from the health care law — a significant development that Democrats are dismissing as par for the course and Republicans are claiming as a political victory.

The Health and Human Services Department announced late Friday that Nevada had secured a statewide waiver from certain implementation requirements of the Obama administration’s health care law, because forcing them through, the department found, “may lead to the destabilization of the individual market.”

The announcement makes Nevada one of only three states to have compliance requirements under the health care bill waived.

Nevada’s Insurance Division had appealed to the feds to reduce the federal requirement that health plans serving people who buy insurance on their own must spend at least 80 percent of the money they collect on medical expenses. Under the national rule, companies that don’t spend that percentage of revenue on medical costs have to cut policyholders rebate checks starting this year.

Nevada asked that requirement be reduced to 72 percent for one year, arguing that top insurance providers would be so strapped to make the payments that they’d exit the state market.

Health and Human Services didn’t fully buy that argument, but did agree to reduce the requirement to 75 percent for a year, expressing concern about what might happen to people with policies from insurers Golden Rule and Aetna if they didn’t.

Together, Golden Rule and Aetna cover 24 percent of Nevada’s insured; but they, along with Sierra Health and MEGA, which cover another 4 percent, are spending nowhere near 80 percent of revenue on health care coverage.

The change is less the feds giving underperforming insurance agencies a free pass than buying time for providers to shape up, or policyholders to ship out with reasonable warning time: Nevada has no law that says if you lose insurance because your insurer shuts down, another company has to pick you up. To prevent that, Health and Human Services determined it had to “provide the opportunity for plans with low ‘medical loss ratios’ to adjust their business models to reach 80 percent” with the reduced, 75 percent mandate for the rest of 2011 — that being the average medical loss ratio that the state’s top 10 insurers currently post.

Let’s all sing it together along with Pelosi and Reid now: “I’ve got friends in high places …”

Unless your company kicked in big bucks to Obama’s campaign last time around. Then you’ll get a waiver.

If not, you can still get a waiver, if you’re in a union. Otherwise, you’re pretty much outa luck.

But rest assured, there’s absolutely NO politics involved in deciding who gets a waiver. Hey, both HHS and the Sun King/Messiah/Keeper-of-the-Greens/Vacationer-in-Chief say so. So you can be suuuuure of it.

By the way, will someone explain to me: if Obamacare is the best, most awesomest, coolest program EVAH….why are the president’s allies and buddies all going to such great lengths to be exempted from it?

What we have here is total government take-over of our health care industry but it is not about covering those who have no health care. This administration has done nothing but DIVIDE and we have two very distinct groups: those who will give favors and privileges from the Obama administration –and those who will pay for EVERYTHING. His policy for the economy is those who support him [i.e. unions] will get the jobs and favors–and all the rest of us who just have to fend for ourselves. In just about every instance–there are the chosen ones and the rest of us. Every time a wavier is handed out.. those of us who work for a living will end up paying a larger share. Where in the Constitution does it state that my government can FORCE me to purchase health care insurance and WHERE does it state they this same government can FORCE me to pay for someone else’s health care? After the Indiana Supreme Court ruling that basically declares our 4th Amendment null & void—it’s time for the revolution.

Yes, it’s time for the high and mighty in DC politics to get taken down….politically and personally, they are corrupt. They have no integrity. Their main point for being there is simply to give out favors to those who support them, forget about the Constitution…they trashed that a long time ago. That’s why they need to stack the courts.

Sadly, don’t expect any help from the scotus. Four liberal judges in lockstep, five cowardly conservative judges. Washington is totally infested with weasels out for themselve. The American people are no more than dirt under their feet.

You’da thought Dingy and Nazi and Duh-1 would have been fighting these waivers tooth-and-nail. After all, they insisted everyone had to be signed up for this fecal pile to work, and now they’re giving waivers to everyone except those who were vocally against the bill? Seems to me that kinda says the whole thing was BS to begin with.

NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE at all should be given a waiver for this idiotic law. You wanted it you clowns you got it. Even the morons who voted this peice of crap into existance should be forced to be on this plan. The Navy should remove it’s mini hospital from the Capital grounds, and these buffoons should be forced to go to some clinic to be checked over.

All of these waivers by people who wanted this pos, are getting rather upsetting. – Lorica